In which the pond does philosophy with the dog botherer ...

The reptiles will keep their proud symbols, dammit, no matter what that wretched Lt General Angus Campbell might say, and the pond is with them, valiant warriors that they are …

And now as an aside, the pond will confess to a moment of weakness - a visit to Fairfax.

You see, Greg Callaghan did a story on that hero of the Devine and Dame Slap, Jordan Peterson, available for gluttons of punishment in full here …

The pond got to this exchange …

… and at that point stopped reading, because it knew it was keeping company with a professional, dissembling liar of the academic kind, a man too gutless and perhaps too aware of some of his key demographics, to say that he was a believer, an atheist or an agnostic.

Any straight to the point answer would have been acceptable - and in reality a believing Xian would have committed a mortal sin to have so dissembled about faith and belief in Christ the redeemer.

Instead came that classic academic bullshit line about "I don't like to step outside my area of competence", and the pond knew it had nothing to learn from Peterson, whether speaking inside or outside his area of competence, but at least it knew why the likes of Devine and Dame Slap loved this phoney …

But why bring this up now? Well the dog botherer was out and about this day, and in a kind of passing off or trading on Peterson, the fraud's visage was at the top of the piece, for reasons that turned out to be as mysterious and as useless as Peterson's remarkable capacity for fudging ...

Here's the thing. Whenever the dog botherer gets to attempting deep thinking, the pond can't help thinking he's stepping outside his area of competence.

The pond can't actually work out what the dog botherer's area of competence might be. He did after all, help Lord Downer with the Iraq war and at one point was Malware's COS.

The pond hates to quote Joe Alston, but hey, any point in a competence storm ...

…. remember back in January when Tony Abbott was being laughed off the national stage for knighting Prince Philip and the conservative commentariat were calling for the blood of the PM's chief of staff Peta Credlin? 
Daily Telegraph columnist Miranda Devine, for one, wasn't wasting time with subtleties, openly pushing for Credlin's replacement to be "the person she didn't want to hire as head of communication strategy, despite various entreaties from high-level media and political figures: Chris Kenny". 
Kenny, Devine wrote of her News Corp stablemate, is "in touch with the world, has the right ideas [and] shares Abbott's broad world view.
"But his greatest attribute is that he's fearless and confident enough to challenge the cosy consensus thinking." 
But who comprised Malcolm Turnbull's inner sanctum when the Grech/Utegate misjudgment destroyed his leadership? 
His chief of staff was Kenny – fearless to a fault! – while Credlin was banished to a broom closet, finishing her law degree. 

And there's the pond's problem in a nutshell … philosophising's all very well, but basic competence and managerial skills have more appeal, and whenever the dog botherer has actually got near the levers of power, he's been singularly incompetent, in a fearlessly foolish way ...

And now for some feeble philosophising ...

Ah, a paradigm shift.

The pond would usually have stopped reading at that point … as soon as a passing flake, an academic meteor like Peterson is named as a paradigm shift, the pond knows it's in company with lemmings searching for the latest cliff …

Oh okay, one good meme deserves another, whatever that dreadful Campbell man might say …

You see, Jim lad, all this talk, putting on fancy airs, and searching for philosophical meanings, when any good pirate, banker or media proprietor knows what it's really all about ...

“One at a time, one at a time,” laughed Dr. Livesey. “You have heard of this Murdoch, I suppose?” 

“Heard of him!” cried the squire. “Heard of him, you say! He was the bloodthirstiest buccaneer that sailed. Blackbeard was a child to Murdoch. The Spaniards and the Democrats were so prodigiously afraid of him that, I tell you, sir, I was sometimes proud he sold his soul for an American passport. I've seen his top-sails with these eyes, off Trinidad, and the cowardly son of a rum-puncheon that I sailed with put back—put back, sir, into Port of Spain.” 

“Well, I've heard of him myself, in England,” said the doctor. “But the point is, had he money?” “Money!” cried the squire. “Have you heard the story? What were these villains after but money? What do they care for but money? For what would they risk their rascal carcasses but money?” (Ahoy,  don't look port side, piracy on the starboard bow at Project Gutenberg here).

And now to return to the dog botherer's rascal carcass:

If protecting Western civilisation means Fox News supporting the election of Donald Trump, then perhaps everything the dog botherer has just scribbled is a pile of Sean Hannity tosh …

There should be a new rule … as soon as someone tosses "snowflake" into the argument, they've done a Godwin's and have lost …

But it's all of a piece with angry old farts shouting at passing clouds and the young, while passing hugely funny jokes, like the one about the lizards of Oz supporting intellectual diversity. There's more diversity in the average gnat than walks amongst the reptiles, true believers and prone to any passing messiah dressed up as a paradigm shift ...

Fortunately, the pond looks elsewhere for its religion, and the Pope is in the house today, with more papery here, and this day he's got a terrific idea for a musical for Liberals ...

Oh sheesh, it's the pond's favourite show. We could have put up a clip of Money, Money, Money, but here you go,  Lt General Angus ...